south korea losses in automakers were offset by gains in technology shares and ship builders. meanwhile australia's asx 200 up nearly 1% today with miners and banks gaining knmomentum. sensex lower by 0.5%. >> thank you for that. a one meert high tsunami has hit the ming a sgi prefecture in japan after an earthquake struck. the quake rocked buildings as far as tokyo. all nuclear plants and refiners are operating as normal. we did see the dollar yen hit a session on -- or the yen hitting a session high. we have a little bit higher, the yen right now, 82.37. peter styles is joining us for more. >> we've had six earthquakes, decreasing in magnitude. we had the 7.3, a lot smaller than the one which devastated japan on fukushima. it's probably at least 500 times less in energy. and so we've had a sequence of 7.3, 6.2 and then going through 5.5 down to 4.8. so a cluster of earthquakes. they're relatively shallow, which means they're at the outer rim of where they're generated, which is why probably the devastation isn't enormous. and the earthquake mechanism is one which would tend